Give credit for the heart (COLUMN)

As I lay on the operating room table looking at my heart, I thought about my father.

It was late summer and Renee would call, "Dinner's ready!" and I would head upstairs like a zillion times before.

By the time I got there I would be panting like I'd just run a marathon and would have to catch my breath before I could eat or talk.

Answering Renee's queries I would blame it on the extra weight Father Time has ordered me to carry during these later years (It couldn't possibly be my eating habits!).

By October, she ordered me to see my physician who immediately ordered an EKG, and, after reviewing it, said, "Ah, A-fib!"

A-fib (AF) is atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat. Symptoms include palpitations, exercise intolerance, angina, congestive heart failure, edema or ... shortness of breath. It's also responsible for one third of all strokes!

"We'll need tests," the doctor said, and during these last three months I've paraded back and forth to the Ann Arbor VA Hospital.

Test one was an echocardiogram that reminded me of the first time I saw our oldest grandson; the method used to view my heart was the same ultrasound probe his mother's doctor used on her belly.

Happily, "No valve leaks; everything's good!" was the report.

Next was a chest X-ray followed by a pulmonary function test. Again I was overjoyed at getting a clean bill of health, especially considering all the moronic years I had smoked three packs of cigarettes each day!

After a CT scan turned up nothing, I huffed and puffed my way through a stress test that gave my cardiologist reason to order the heart catheter procedure for which I was now lying on the ice-cold operating table.

My dignity had suffered a bruise as catheter preparation needed an area shaved that had never before been shaved.

I glanced up at the slow-drip saline solution feeding into my arm and soon was in lah-lah land from something they then added to the mix.

"You'll feel a little pinch," called the doctor as he made the tiny incision into my groin and the next thing I knew, there on three giant screens alongside me were pictures of my ticker.

Dye injected into my veins verified no blockages and soon I was back in my room being prepped to go home.

"On paper," the doctor later shared after checking results, "you look like a 16-year-old!" Then he turned to me and said, "What the heck happened to the rest of you?"

Smart aleck!

While I am overjoyed with results so far, I'm still in A-fib so it's back for more tests in the coming weeks.

As I lay on that table watching doctors examine every tiny avenue of my heart, I couldn't help but think of my father who died prematurely of heart failure and I wondered how much longer he might have lived had these medicines and technologies been available then.

In those days if someone needed heart or brain surgery, you simply said goodbye to them. Now, those surgeries are common, everyday occurrences.

I believe God has given man the ability to discover these lifesaving drugs and procedures, and, how sad it is He gets so little credit for it.

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